Benjamin Grossberg’s Space Traveler: A Translation

By Phillip Spotswood

In the human network, circuitry keeps
everything flowing. Anions and cations seek
valence, wherever the center may be.
How we pulse, though—
our attractors—thrust
in strange ways—both biochemical
and other. An unspoken law of self—
a vague necessity,
creates in us a chaotic desire
for someone outside of self, societal norm.
For instance, Mother, you
could, after one marriage and five
children, fall irrevocably in love with
Cassandra the maid, playing Schubert
on the family piano. All of our systems
are tangled. Every carbon exhalation (
constant velocity) pushes us away from
where we were. Roethke’s shaking
keeps us steady, keeps our boundaries
shifting and our appetite,
insatiable. I am forever roving, dark
star collapsing, systems that blend (bend)
inward and against no discernible center.